Considered by The New York Times one of the poets who writes “at the juncture of rapture and rupture,” R. M. Ryan studied with Pulitzer-Prize-winner Howard Nemerov. He is the author of two books of poetry—Goldilocks in Later Life and Vaudeville in the Dark—and of a novel—The Golden Rules, which is currently in development as a movie. Believing that poets and Buddhists need to live and work in the world, he has held a wide variety of jobs—automobile assembler, forklift driver, German translator, corporate trainer, to name a few. He has been practicing Zen since 2009 and Yoga since about 1990.